Monism-and-Dualism.pptx

Monism-and-Dualism.pptx

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  1. According toKarl Jaspers, human being is self- regulating will being. 2. Jose Rizal affirms that human reason makes a person wonder about his/her existence. 3. Guilt does not lead human being to a greater knowledge of himself/herself. 4. Immanuel Kant believes that human being is lost in total determination. 5. Karl Jaspers claims that human being is more than what he/she can know of himself/herself. www.beforeitsnews.com
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  I am somethingreal and really existing, but what am I?... a thing which thinks. -Rene Descartes
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  Various Ways inDealing with the Question “Who am I?” in the course of History
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  At this pointyou know what it means to say that man is an embodied spirit. Man has a body and a soul that together consist what he calls his self. The problem of the self that is expressed in the question “Who am I?” is one of the difficult problems in philosophy. Various perspectives and debates sprung from it. As a beginner’s introduction, you will be oriented with the problem, through brief discussions of • Duality of body and soul • Unity of body and soul • Human consciousness and existence and • Human faculty
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  A. Duality ofBody and Soul The duality of body and soul is the view held by those who believe that our body is separate and distinct from our soul. The soul, though conceived in many ways, is that aspect of our being that is not material. The soul or the spirit is philosophically discussed as mind since mental capacities and abilities are attributed to it. For dualists, the mind (mental) is not to be mistaken for the brain (physical) since the mental is a unique phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the non- mental or physical.
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  Plato is oneof those who argued for the dualism of body and soul. The human soul, he theorized, exists prior to the body and even after the body is long gone. Rene Descartes also recognized dualism and expressed this in his Meditations. In employing the method of doubt at the start of his meditations, he arrived at the conclusion that he exists because doubt requires a doubter. That he doubts is proof that he is existing. When we ask question “who am i?” we are involved in thinking about ourselves. We reflect or introspect. In doing so, we are looking within or deep inside ourselves (at our soul or mind). Despite numerous problems, perhaps one useful insight to be drawn out from dualism of body and mind is, that the qualities of our body are separate and distinct from the qualities of our soul, so that what happens to our body in life and in death does not translate to the exact occurrence to our soul.
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  B. Unity ofBody and Soul In contrast to dualism, monism is much simpler and avoids many unresolved questions. To say that the body and soul together make one entity does not require much proof as opposed to offering the dualist view. Among those who did not subscribe to dualism is St. Thomas Aquinas. Following Aristotle’s notion of form and matter, Aquinas claimed that body and soul are not two entities that interact with each other but are being made up of matter and form. Christians believe that man is created body and soul by God. Man is embodied soul. We have a body but we are more than our body. Through the body we express what is within ourselves.
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  C. Human Consciousnessand Existence Part of the reason why the mind-body problem could not be entirely abandoned in philosophy is because humans naturally engage in thought as they interact with the world. Nonetheless, the complexities of thought could not be explained by nature. A special branch of philosophy called Philosophy of Mind deals with this puzzle. One of the things they looked into is John Lockes’s notion of inner sense that is better understood as reflection or introspection. Locke was the first to point out that all thoughts are conscious. Moreover, our consciousness is the criterion for personal identity.
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  Immanuel Kant isalso interpreted by philosophers of mind as providing the basis for a rationalist approach. The self is a rational agent who can know their own thoughts and attitudes, and be responsible for them. The first -person being or the ‘I’ is so obvious and yet extremely difficult to explain. This intrigued phenomenologists and existentialists, too. The phenomenologists expounds on intentionality of consciousness while the existentialist explores the feelings that are awakened by consciousness. Thus, it is clear that our mind presents phenomena that are distinct from those experienced by our body. We can visualize pain and experience despair, for instance without physical cause. We have reasons to believe that who we are cannot simply be reduced o our corporeality and yet we do not fully know or even understand the workings of our mind/soul.
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  D. Human Facultyof Reason All these things are puzzling and intriguing. One does not have to be a philosopher to relate with or understand these things. Humans have a mental faculty or capacity that enables them to think, to reason, to understand, to compare, to analyse, to associate ideas, and so on. Philosophers are in agreement that human beings have this human faculty of reason. But as to what reason can do and what it really is, there are differing views.